Talent is timeless

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Singer Karen Knowles used Young Talent Time as a
platform for a thriving solo career, writes Tim
Hunter.

An Evening With Karen Knowles" trumpet the posters outside
cabaret restaurant Capers Melbourne in Hawthorn. Ah, yes, Karen
Knowles, the Young Talent Time star of the late 1970s with
the big voice, the dimples, the smile and the blonde bangs, has
appeared, it seems, out of nowhere. So, where has she been, and
what has she been up to?

"Since when?" the woman herself says with a laugh over a decaf
latte. "It depends on where you want to start from."

Yes, it's the same girl, except she's a woman now, with that
same smile and those dimples still in place. The bangs are gone,
thankfully. "I started performing live when I was 18, and I haven't
stopped since. It's a mixture of concerts at arts centres and
corporate conventions and cabaret venues across Australia. I really
still love doing it, after all these years." So she didn't
disappear at all; she just went under the radar.

Knowles has been involved in the music and entertainment scene
for 30 years, ever since she joined Young Talent Time aged
11 - and that's still hard to shake off. "It was such a part of
people's lives; I didn't have a concept of that because I was in
it, but for everybody else then, the football and Young Talent
Time were a major part of the Australian way of life.

"It doesn't worry me so much, but it was hard when I initially
left the show and started recording. It was hard for the recording
industry to take me seriously as an artist, but that's changed a
lot with what's happening in Australian Idol. Television is
looked on a lot more positively now than it was back then."

Knowles is one of the few YTTers who managed to build a
successful and scandal-free music career from its foundations. "I
think the key to my continuing success was recording straight after
YTT with Ron Tudor, which allowed me to be seen as a solo
artist. I'm not sure if I'd still be doing it now if it wasn't for
that grounding."

Her first single as a solo performer was Why Won't You
Explain. It was a top-10 hit, the first time a schoolgirl had
achieved the feat, and is still on the playlist of easy-listening
radio stations.

It was an adult, melodramatic song with lyrics such as "Why
won't you explain/My life was sunshine, and now it's rain", but
Knowles' unusually mature voice made sense of it, despite her
youth. "I had no idea of what it all meant at the time," she says
with a smile, and laughs at the memory. "But yes, even looking at
the tapes when I was 11, it was a well-matured voice."

Knowles' musical director and accompanist, David Cameron, who's
also a co-owner of Capers Melbourne, believes Knowles' voice is
just one of her strengths. "She gives everything," he says.

"I don't think I've done a show where I haven't seen a little
tear out the side of her eye if we do something that's important to
her at the time. She's a give-all performer. I love it; it's very
nourishing for me as an accompanist."

Since YTT, Knowles has recorded seven solo albums,
performed in the stage musical Big River in 1988, was the
lead singer with the Seekers in the early 1990s, wrote and
performed a song for the Aboriginal Reconciliation Convention in
1997 - which she feels quite passionate about - and performed along
the way. "It's been a great run, and I'm very happy with the way
it's gone," she said. "Recording has always been the mainstay of
what I do, though, and I'll continue to do that. I've really done a
lot."

More recently, Knowles has also expanded her skills to
entertainment law, and opened the Karen Knowles Singing School in
Melbourne last September. It's so successful that there are four
branches in Melbourne, with one just opened in Western Australia,
and Brisbane and Sydney to follow. "It's an idea that's been there
for ages, but I haven't had the space to get it organised," she
says of the school."

And, finally, do her performances these days include Why
Won't You Explain? Knowles laughs. "Not unless it gets yelled
out for."

Karen Knowles

WHERE Capers Melbourne, corner Power Street and
Burwood Road, HawthornWHEN 6.30pm (dinner), May 27HOW MUCH $75 dinner and showDETAILSwww.capersmelbourne.com.au